


Trust Your Instincts

by Aleph (Immatrael), EarthScorpion



Series: Kerisgame extras [4]
Category: Exalted
Genre: F/F, Role-Playing Game, Roleplay Logs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-23 12:56:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13788219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immatrael/pseuds/Aleph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthScorpion/pseuds/EarthScorpion
Summary: Every human has both hun and po; higher soul and lower, reason and emotion, human and animal. Keris's interactions with her po soul have been... less than stellar, in the past. But perhaps it's time to put aside that animosity at last.Of course, that's easier said than done.





	Trust Your Instincts

**Author's Note:**

> This Kerisgame extra fits between chapters 9 and 10 of the [Parenthood](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13788126) arc of Ascensions and Transgressions.

_a tale of a meeting of souls_

* * *

 

“... okay,” Keris admitted. “I’m here, like you asked. And... a bit lost. What, exactly, are you doing?”

The tableau in front of her was an odd one, even by the standards of Krisity. The bronze and ivory pavilion stood atop one of the foothills in the region where the looming peaks of the Spires dipped down into the dusty expanses of the Ruin. The ivory was pitted and windworn and the metal rough and dented, with fingerprint-divots pressed into the surfaces like clay wherever the two met. The cloud cover overhead was sparse today; a prevailing wind from the Ruin pushing the dark storms Seawards.

Under the arched roof of the open-walled structure, Echo and Vali were carefully examining a pile of... well, junk, as far as Keris could tell. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the contents. Two acorns and a bird’s egg from the Swamp. A small metal box with a keyhole. A sealed envelope. A hair tie - with a lock of what looked like Dulmean angyalka-hair held in it. An ice-vase half full of caustic rainwater.

This last seemed to be fascinating her children, who were taking turns poking it. Surprisingly, it didn’t seem to be disintegrating under Echo’s touch, despite her lack of gloves.

“... and is it going to result in another war?” Keris added, thinking back on past occasions of Echo being quiet and staying relatively still for any length of time. They generally preceded chaos and tantrums.

But the two seemed to be getting along rather well, and Keris couldn’t hear any massed groups that sounded invasion-like. There were a few wind- and metal-keruby hanging around nearby - experimenting with percussion, from the sounds of it - and of course Vali’s kitten was winding around his ankles, but otherwise they seemed more or less alone.

Echo looked up eagerly at her mother and bounced to her feet. Excitedly, she gestured with an intricate series of hand signs that she and her baby brother were working on a _super-special project_ they’d discovered together which he’d needed her very clever help with. Lifting the ice-vase to demonstrate, she tapped it, hugged it and even took a casual stab at it with her knife. It didn’t so much as chip.

Then she turned it over and poured the water out. No sooner had the last drop left the fluted rim than it shattered spontaneously, falling apart into chunks that turned to slush even before they hit the ground. Vali’s glowing orange-brown eyes were riveted on it as it fell, and he grinned happily.

Keris considered her beaming daughter and the puddle that was left of the ex-vase. “Um,” she said. “I... see.”

Vali sighed. “We found a thing I can do to things,” he explained, tapping one of the acorns. “Things that have something in them. Most of them break when I try, but the ones that don’t get stronger. And then they don’t break for anything else unless they stop having something in them.”

Raising a finger, Echo helpfully pointed out that technically they _can_ be broken by other things, but only by special weapons like her pretty knife, and only when she’s really trying instead of just showing off how their discovery works. Vali ignored her in favour of the egg.

“Right now I’m thinking about what happens to this when the baby bird wants to hatch,” he said thoughtfully, weighing it in one hand. “What if it can’t break the shell or get out?”

It probably dies, Echo opined. How mean of Vali to lock the poor little birdie in a prison it can’t get out of! She was only trying to help him understand his make-things-harder trick!

Vali made a high-pitched sound of distress, electricity crackling through his hair. Then his expression settled into a determined scowl. He thrust the egg at Keris with an urgent grunt, repeating the gesture until she took it in a loop of hair.

“You have to keep it,” he ordered fiercely. “And listen to it a lot and let the baby bird out when it wants to fly. I can’t hear inside and Echo would forget, so you have to. Promise!”

“I promise, I promise!” Keris agreed hastily, cocking an ear to the egg. The little bird inside seemed fine for the moment. Albeit a lot less energetic that the two babies inside her.

“So what are you doing this _for_ , exactly?” she asked. Before she could get an answer, though, the sound of falling water approached, and she turned to find an agyakerub on anyaglo-back dismounting. The living canvas had sculpted its face into an angry demon-mask out of shock, and its many-coloured smock was rumpled.

“Lady Keris!” it called, running up to her. It sounded male, but that was always a bit flexible with any of Zanara’s creatures. Probably-he had a wave-bladed knife at his hip that bore the characteristic marks of Zanara’s own work, so her youngest probably liked them enough to make them a gift. “Lady Keris, Queen Dulmea bids you return to the City! There’s been an attack on the Isles!”

Echo perked up noticeably; her interest caught.

“No,” said Keris without looking round.

Echo pouted at the cruel callous cruelty of Keris’s spoilsportiness. She just wanted to go have fun and mama was getting in the way.

“I said no. Vali,” she continued, “do you know anything about this?” He shrugged unconcernedly, and Keris nodded. “Sorry for leaving you alone when it was meant to be your playtime, but I promise I’ll make it up to you later.” She held up the egg. “And I’ll look after this.”

Vali considered it. “Sure,” he decided. “But remember you have to let it out as soon as it wants!” With a flash and a boom, he was gone, drawing winces from both Keris and Echo.

How rude, gestured Echo. Even after all the help she’d given her little brother, he still made loud hurty noises around her. Really, she mock-sighed, there was just no helping some people’s deplorable lack of manners. Grabbing the lock of hair, she flounced off in the direction of the Ruin; an almost-audible pout to her strut. Keris rolled her eyes. That little performance was more for the benefit of anyone watching than Echo’s own feelings. Melodrama came naturally to her fifth soul.

“So,” she sighed. “I suppose that leaves us to go see what Dulmea wants. What’s your name?”

The little clay cherub blinked up at her and scuffed a foot along the ground. Adjusting his robes, his demon-mask darkened, paint oozing from his pores. Keris had the suspicion that this might have been something like bushing for his kind. “Yarnhrei, milady,” he muttered, looking down. Keris nodded and mounted the anyaglo in front of her; parting her hair so as not to engulf the boy with it.

“So,” she said as they took to the air. “Zanara sent you? I can see that’s one of their knives.”

“The Prinz picked me out to be one of his ambassadors and her scouts. Both of them like me,,” he bragged. “I’m good at finding things and I’m good at getting into places - especially with the seal I made that she liked and he copied.

Keris hummed affirmatively. This one sounded ambitious. Something about his voice reminded her of people she’d known on the streets. Yarnhrei sounded like the kind of kid who’d join up and coming gangs, fighting to get to the top - but only as long as they were in the ascendancy. Those kinds of kids didn’t like losing - not least because they were nearly as good as they thought they were. Certainly, for Zanara to personally have made them a knife meant her youngest liked them.

Soon the walls of the City approached. Keris heard a buzz of activity on the ramparts as they passed overhead that got as far as arrows being drawn before a frightened-sounding voice recognised her and the weapons were hastily stowed again.

“What was that about?” she asked. “The demons on the walls were getting ready to fire on us.”

“Queen Dulmea made an edict,” Yarnhrei replied. “Anyone going into the City has to stamp in or out. Most people go through the gates, but even if you’re flying there are places you have to stop on the walls and say where you’re going and why. Otherwise you get shot at. Um, you can come and go as you please, of course. And the other Royals just get noted as they pass; they don’t have to stop or sign anything.” He squirmed up to get closer to Keris’s ear before continuing. “I think it’s because she wants more control over the Outer City. In the Inner City her music is everywhere so she knows everything, but some of the Royals have been sneaking soldiers through the Outer City for their wars.”

“Meaning Rathan and Haneyl,” Keris said dryly as they passed over the walls of the inner city and the red band that marked the bounds of Dulmea’s absolute authority. The new city didn’t look much like the old city. It was much more… well, it was much more Hellish. Dulmea hadn’t made up fully with Keris yet, and she considered it an open invitation to imprint her own tastes onto the world. Tall spires connected by perilously thin bridges jutted up above the canals. In fact, Keris realised, the bridges almost looked like the strings of some great instrument and thrummed in the breeze, and hollow towers were placed to catch the wind and produce musical noise. The entire city had grown as some vast instrument, no individual part musical but somehow harmonious when heard as a whole. “Well, I suppose I can’t argue with her running the City with a bit more attention. Let’s see what she’s got for me.”

Dulmea was, in fact, engaged in running the City when they arrived. Two of her bodies were talking to an ironbelly toad and an angry-looking inyenk. Both of them stood as Keris entered, and played a rippling chime.

“I have judged,” the Dulmea next to the toad said in a commanding tone. “For the theft of produce and damage done to his business, Moh Levet will serve Sweet-Tooth Navil as a beast of burden and bodyguard for one season. He may feed only on their trips to gather produce, and should his work be found wanting for a day, that day will be added to his sentence. Should he defy my ruling, his leave to remain within my domain shall be stripped from him. I have spoken.”

The great toad sagged, its great iron-studded bulk deflating. The inyenk, by contrast, looked quite pleased - insofar as Keris could read the expressions of a manta-ray-river-dragon-thing covered in mouths. Neither protested, and the Dulmea that had spoken turned to meet Keris as the other led them out of the Tower.

“Keris, welcome,” she greeted. “Yarnhrei, well done for fetching her. You may go.”

The little clay-cherub smiled with smug satisfaction, gloating over personal acknowledgment from Dulmea. Daringly he bowed and leaned in to kiss the strands of her hair, then skipped out, his smock shushing around him. Dulmea had a certain expression of amused tolerance on her face - that she felt he had pushed his luck as far as it might go, but was also, despite herself, slightly charmed. Yes, Keris decided, that was a dangerous kerub.

Once he left, Dulmea’s expression shifted to something more serious. “Come, child,” she said in an undertone. “There is something you must see.”

“Yarnhrei told me, yeah,” said Keris, jogging along the route Dulmea pointed her and leaving the original body behind. Chell pointed her to the top chamber of the Tower, and another Dulmea met her there.

There was no tea. Keris’s lips thinned. This was serious, then.

“An attack on the Isles,” she continued, picking up the conversation where she’d left it. “But I don’t understand why you’re getting involved. I mean, you usually leave them to it. And who would do that, anyway? Haneyl and Rathan are both away. Was it Cal-”

“It was not Calesco who launched the attack,” Dulmea interrupted. “It was the serpent.” She gestured Keris over to the broad silver bowl that held a model of the Empire; as wide around as a table that could seat fifty or more. Keris looked down on it and whistled. A plume of fog and mist had almost cut the Isles in half; its point reaching almost to the edge of the City. Glancing out of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, Keris could see it in the distance, beyond the docks.

“Okay, that is weird,” she agreed. “Why the Isles? Zanara’s done barely any fog-clearing. If anything, I’d expect it to try and snatch land from the Swamp or the Ruin.” She gestured down at the map where the mist was indeed somewhat lopsided. The new land that had formed in her five-day dream a year ago had been mostly uncovered in her daughters’ territories, while her sons and her youngest had been far less active in pushing it back. She paused. Although she wouldn’t put it beyond girl-Zanara to deliberately annoy the snake...

“I know not, child, but I fear this is only the first of several such attacks. You see here?” A hair tendril swung past Keris’s shoulder as Dulmea moved up behind her and gestured to an darker area of the cloud wall adjacent to the Ruin. “And here in the Swamp as well. The plume that struck the Isles looked like that hours before it erupted. This is more than the normal wars and conflicts. The serpent is aiming for something.”

Keris bit her lip, studying the darker clouds. It looked like they were slowing down. And that would fit, she realised. If a current of fog inside the cloud wall slowed, it would... fall inwards, and eventually burst out altogether. But slow by cloud wall standards was still very, very fast. Anything caught in a plume like that would be lucky to survive.

And the snake could... keep this up indefinitely, really.

“Shit,” she said, staring down at her soul. “You’re right. This is bad.”

One hand strayed over the curve of her belly as she thought. The other idly wound a strand of hair around a finger.

“Well then,” she sighed. “I guess I better go see what it wants.”

 

* * *

 

The Cloud Wall was one of those things that you couldn’t take your eyes off the first time you saw it, but which you barely registered once you’d adapted to it. The first time Keris had woken up to find a world within her soul, she’d been transfixed for a good few minutes by the sight of the white clouds rising up and up and _up_ ; the curve of the black sky capping it like the top of some impossibly vast tower seen from within. From a distance it looked more like a cliff than a cloud; it was only as you got closer that you saw the currents of puffy cloud lazily drifting along with deceptive speed.

But after a while it just became backdrop. The distant edge to her inner empire; a towering wall of white that meant “stop here”. Familiarity didn’t breed contempt - the terrible, arduous, gruelling run that had pushed back the Wall and expanded the borders of her empire had etched a painful respect for the place into Keris’s memory - but given time it nonetheless blunted the edge of awe and wore down the hammer of perspective.

Now she stood on a ship at the edge of the Isles, where Zanara hadn’t got around to painting many islands onto the sea. The few here were damp, miserable places where the colours were faded and clinging sea-mists hid what beauty there was. Keris took the sight in afresh, shifting her balance automatically to account for the swaying of the deck. The tengerval at the rudder was nervous; she could hear it in the shifting of his frills and the needless frequency with which he tugged at the small sail. He wanted to leave this place; it was too close to the Outer Rim, too prone to artstorms and mutated beasts.

That was fine with Keris. She’d seen what she needed to. The line of the fogburst was turnwise of her, a wall of white mist three storeys high and twice as wide. It was dissipating slowly, unravelling from the Cityward end back towards the Wall, but the damage had been done. She’d checked some of the bodies that had been caught in it; the air ripped clean out of their lungs by asphyxiating fog.

This had happened for a reason. It was time to find out what.

Hopping off the boat, she threw a nod to the terrified tengervel and hit the water at a sprint. Swerving around a looming iceberg that must’ve drifted up from the Sea and squinting against a sudden flurry of hail that must have come off the Wall clockwise, she made herself an arrow and shot directly at the churning white clouds. This close, she could see the variations in the thing; the way it bulged at the bottom with a buttress of mist that gave it the deceptive illusion of sluggishness. Past that inner layer of fog, she knew, was the howling gale-force fury where her other half lived.

She plunged into the leading edge of the bank. It wasn’t normal mist, which thinned out and diffused at the edges - this was the start of the _true_ fog, and it was almost like plunging underwater. Complete, she noted absently, with the sudden scarcity of air. A little further, then, and...

The mist thinned, and she plunged out through another water-like layer. Keris skidded to a halt in shock, swore, and then swore again in more shock when she didn’t immediately sink. Looking down in surprise, she found herself standing on...

... on...

... on what she was pretty sure felt like Clay Lane, actually, back in Firewander. She gave a couple of experimental stamps and made a few circles. Yeah. Yeah, patches of old paving tiles, broken up by wet mud that had - she opened a mouth on her foot for a moment - yeah, tiny pottery fragments in it from the rejects of the potter’s over the wall. They’d throw the things at rats - both the four-legged kind, which were good eating if you could stun them, and also any kids they caught trying to sneak in.

Except that clayworks was several thousand miles away and also in another realm of existence. As was Clay Lane. And Firewander. And Nexus.

Huh.

So, Keris mused, listening carefully. It sounded like... yes, there was almost another Direction out here, in the mists. A thin ring, inside the muted howling of the Wall itself but separated from the Far Isles by that inner wall of fog. And it was higher up, too - the ground had risen up like the rim of a bowl. Though the ground in question sounded like Nexus - city built on city; ruined buildings atop the ruins of other buildings with even more ruined buildings underneath.

Glancing up, she couldn’t see the black sky of the Empire. The inner wall must be like a shopkeeper’s canvas awning, slanting out from the Wall proper a few hundred feet up and then dropping down to conceal the still space within. The Edgelands, perhaps. Or the Rim. But what lived here?

Something chimed, very quietly, and Keris spun. The thing - whatever it was - was already retreating, but what she saw of it looked human. She shot after it, eager to have something to interrogate.

Ten minutes later, she was still pursuing the mystery thing, and getting progressively more frustrated. It wasn’t that it was faster than her - though it was close; its natural speed rivalled her own without magic. But the ruined buildings and echoes of familiar streets in this place were throwing her off; distracting her. Most were Nexan, but she’d stalled out and frozen for a good twenty seconds when she’d realised that a riverbank she’d been chasing the creature along was familiar in a way that went back a decade and a half to her earliest memories.

And the thrice-damned fog! It blanketed these Edgelands in lazily roaming drifts, and though Keris didn’t need to fear suffocation in the banks, sound within one was cut to almost nothing. She’d almost lost her prey twice when it held its breath to dodge through clouds that rendered it silent, and she hadn’t managed to build up a good picture of what it sounded like at all! It certainly didn’t make any of the noise she expected from something running, though she was pretty sure it had feathers in its long hair, and she’d heard fangs sliding across each other when it opened and closed its mouth.

Skidding around a corner as it darted right, Keris ignored- ( _Little Market, southwest corner, those baskets were wicker in Nexus and full of strawberries in Fire but these ones were woven ice and hair and the fruits that filled them clinked like gems_ ) - Keris _ignored_ her surroundings and took to the tops of stalls. The corner fed back onto the generic open patchwork that seemed to characterise most of the Edgelands - recognisable bits were rare and never connected right - but her shortcut had brought her a few metres closer to the fleet shape fleeing from her. Keris hopped a huge gouge in the ground and...

... a huge gouge in the land?

Another one raced up to meet her as her pounding legs carried her forward. She got a better look at this one. It was enormous. It looked like a giant as big as a small city had put a silver-rasp sized to carve whole yeddim to the ground and dragged it along in a wobbly line that ran on out of sight. Countless abrasions the size of her hands contributed to the shallow trench; a ditch literally lacerated into the land by brute force.

Losing track of the thing she was pursuing in her shock, Keris slowed to a halt as she approached a third gouge, and stared at it. She thought of countless razor-edged feathers and the slithering motions of a snake as it moved. She tried to estimate the size of the serpent that would have been needed to leave something like this as it moved.

“... ah,” she said quietly. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who’d grown since their last meeting. Looking left and right along the trail, there was only fog in both directions. Of the thing she’d been chasing, there was no sign or sound.

Shrugging, Keris turned left and started walking. Three tracks so close together meant that the snake came through here a lot. Maybe she could figure out what it was paying so much attention to.

It only took a few minutes of searching to find out. The huge shape loomed out of the fog without warning; a bank drifting away on a strong gust of wind to reveal the structure it had hidden. The suddenness of it was shocking. One moment Keris’s probing whistles were vanishing into an amorphous featureless surrounding haze that returned nothing. The next, she was all but barraged by echoes of silver and ice and ribbon; an enormous _thing_ half-buried that was surrounded by shed feathers and scoured ground.

It was long. Sixty metres if it was an inch, she guessed, with more buried. The hulking hill sloped gently upwards from the shattered sprays of ice where it met the ground, ending with a viciously pointed spike jutting out from the uppermost point. Another curving rise lay behind it in a half circle, the jutting point of the first directed away from the second.

A chime caught Keris’s attention. The mystery prey she had been chasing! It was right up on top of the berm, balanced on the point. She raced up the side, tasting rock and metal ore beneath her feet, and charged for it. Balanced as it was over a three-storey drop and with Keris in the path of its only way down, it was trapped this time.

But it didn’t try to get away. It didn’t even move. She hopped down onto the spire and spun the thing around roughly, coming face to face with...

... herself.

Keris’s eyes went wide. It was her. It was her, with slit pupils and white hair with silver feathers threaded through it and sharp teeth stained with blood. But it was her.

It even had the scars.

Behind the feral, slit-pupiled Gale, a rumble sounded. It cocked its head, considering her for a moment, then threw its head back and let loose with a piercing scream.

Another rumble. And Keris heard the half-circular hill shift. And rise. And spread vast wings. It didn’t sound like an unimportant raised mound anymore. It sounded... silver.

Coiling inward in a tightening spiral, the feathered serpent slithered closer and closer to the raised berm. It was big. Bigger. Last time Keris had confronted it, it had been the size of a wagon train. Now it was longer than the Baisha. Its wings could have crushed houses beneath them. She could hear its power; the terrible force of suffocating fog and blood-soaked silver within the colossal form. It was every bit her equal. As strong as a Demon Prince. As strong as Jacinct, or Ululaya.

Almost a peer of Ligier.

Keris flinched away from the thought, and the snake hissed fiercely, its feathers rattling a chiming chorus to the Gale’s scream. Her doppelgänger was swaying from side to side like a snake staring at a rabbit; its eyes fixed on her face as its maker came closer to the mound and spire.

The mound and...

And Keris suddenly realised what she was standing on. What this spike of rock and the strange-shaped hill behind it was. Why the silver Gale had led her here, and waited at its tip.

It was the Baisha. It was her ship, recast in the materials of the Edgelands.

The cat-like face of her po leaned down through the thinning fog, all burning green eyes and curving silver fangs longer than her spear. There were a pair of scars marking it, Keris noticed with the distant numb feeling of the hunter-turned-prey. One tracing along the line of its jaw, and another across the bridge of its snout. The lines lacked feathers; white lines of roughened silver replacing them instead.

“Pekhijira,” Keris whispered, and braced herself for battle.

 

* * *

 

Staring up into the huge eyes of her second soul, Keris crouched low and waited for the inevitable attack.

But it never came. Pekhijira simply watched her; its head swaying from side to side as its body coiled around and over the Baisha-mound. Its head was the size of a yeddim, Keris estimated, and the silver Gale mirrored its hypnotic sway. There was a thick ruff of feathers at the base of its head - a mane of sorts - and Keris could see long feathered tendrils sweeping back from it. The snake’s equivalent of her own hair, given how some of them were moving.

A few long moments passed, and Keris cautiously straightened.

“... you’re not here to fight me, are you?” she hazarded. “Then what do you want?”

The serpent crooned. The Gale hissed. Keris pursed her lips and looked closer. The feathered tendrils were twisting, tying themselves into knots and lashing from side to side behind the snake’s huge, rearing body. And the Gale; its own hair lashing unhappily and puffing out in places... it had sunk into a combat stance. Not the formal, lightfooted pose of her spear forms; but the ready-to-spring crouch of a street tussler.

Keris knew that body language. It was her own, after all. She frowned, more confused than ever.

“... you’re _upset_ ,” she said, bewildered. “What about?”

A forked red tongue longer than she was tall flickered out of the silver jaws. Whatever it tasted on the air, the serpent seemed to approve, crooning at her with a purr-like trill. Its Gale straightened up a little and nodded intently.

“... that’s a yes, you’re upset, then,” Keris said, eyeing the two carefully. “But... I don’t think you understand what I’m saying, do you? You’re just watching how I say it. Tasting my emotions. Stuff like that.” She nodded. “Okay. Okay. So I just have to work out what it is you’re upset about, then. So... lemme see. You’re part of me, right? More than the others; you _are_ me. You should be feeling whatever I’m feeling, and vice versa. But I’m confused right now and you’re not. I realised something and felt surprised, but you were pleased that I realised it. I didn’t feel all that upset before coming here, but you obviously did.”

The two pairs of eyes boring into her were eerily intense. This wasn’t a normal Gale; not a lesser fragment of the mind that made it. This was more like an avatar that Pekhijira was possessing. There was only one creature watching her, not two copies of the same being; Keris knew it on a level beyond mortal instinct. It was a surprisingly smart trick for a giant snake that couldn't talk.

Hmm. Surprisingly smart...

“So...” she continued, “... either you’ve become more independent and smarter from how you and the others are demon lords now, or else I’m... feeling something I’m not aware of feeling? That overrides my surface emotions? Or maybe both.” She scratched her nose thoughtfully. “You’re the oldest part of me. The most human bit, dumb as that sounds.” Looking the vast serpentine leviathan up and... further up, Keris had to admit it sounded very, very dumb. “So... is this because of Ali and Zany and Xasan? My human family? Did finding them make you get smarter? Did sending them off make you angry?”

Gale and serpent watched her, the latter swaying slightly like a cat judging the distance to a mouse. They gave no response.

Keris pursed her lips, turning abruptly to pace down the length of the icy stone spike as she gestured and spoke. “Fine, never mind that. You’re feeling something I’m not, yeah? If that’s right... then if I’m the ‘reason’ and you’re the ‘passion’, it would mean, uh... lemme see... I’ve been feeling something with my passion but not my reason? Which has bubbled over to the point where you’re attacking the Empire and not mirroring my surface feelings.” She reached the hull, patted it absently and started pacing back up towards the waiting pair. “And you’ve... come to me because you don’t know what to do and need my help to fix it? I guess that’d make sense. If you’re the passion, you can’t really plan or think.”

She came to a stop just outside the Gale’s hair range, and pursed her lips. “So what is it you’re upset about, then?”

Another rumbling hiss was her answer. Tilting its head, the serpent rubbed a silver-feathered cheek along the tip of the false Baisha, crooning softly. Its Gale scowled, bristling and hissing at Keris as its hair rose around it defensively.

“... the _Baisha?_ ” Keris said incredulously. “ _That’s_ what you don’t... wait. Wait...” She drew out the last word as her Gale’s body language sparked another memory and connections started to snap into place. That sulky, defensive posture wasn’t _angry_ , exactly. It wasn’t _opposed_ to the Baisha, it was... oh. _Oh_.

“ _Jealous_ ,” Keris realised with strange, sudden clarity. “You’re _jealous_ of me.”

Vast silver jaws snapped shut with a crash like cymbals, barely a foot away from her face. Keris shrieked and leapt backwards. Okay. Okay, right. That tone had stung its pride, apparently. Don’t do that again. She’d definitely remember that.

“Okay, so... jealous,” she repeated shakily. “Of. Of me having the Baisha. Or, no, that’s not quite it...”

She sunk into a squat, plucking half-heard notes from the air with a wary ear trained on her po, and thought. There were two ways she could look at this. One where Pekhijira was a giant bitchy snake, and one where it was... her. Her passion, her emotions; her human lower soul. If the bitchy snake was jealous of Keris having the Baisha in the first view of things, what did that mean in the second? That she was jealous of herself? That she was jealous of the things she’d been doing?

... except maybe that wasn’t far from the truth. So much of what she’d been doing lately had been for others. Her pregnancy weighing her down and being a general pain in her belly, for her twins. All the work and effort she’d put into her spell, only for Orabilis to claim it. The debt she now owed Ligier, for his backing in protecting her children. The assassination for Orange Blossom so that the woman would tell her something that was Keris’s right to know. The past month escorting a frustratingly slow convoy when she didn’t actually like most of the people in it. The fact that she’d just spent ages running around trying to get her family safe, when she was hurting all over. Even having to hear the relationship drama between Oula and Rathan.

When was the last time she’d done something just for herself? Not just indulging in short-term decadence at the Sceptred Leaf or partaking of the many luxuries of Hell over Calibration; but an actual serious time investment for nothing but her own satisfaction? Taira was for her family’s sake, learning embroidering had been fun but ultimately a gift for Lilunu - even the Memory of Baisha didn’t count; not with a Priest onboard and orders to use it in the name of the Reclamation. Saata and the Hui Cha were _work_ ; a way to hide her true nature and safeguard herself, and the less said about the Lintha the better.

No, the last time she’d pampered herself or done something just because she enjoyed it must have been... Lelabet? But Calesco had gone off at her over that - and Keris had conceded.

“You - _I_ \- want more time for ourself,” Keris murmured. “That’s why you attacked the Sea. You’re jealous of the kids. That I spend so much time on them and so little on me.” Eko had said it too, she realised. That she had no real friends of her own - or at best a tiny handful. Naan, Lilunu and Asarin, possibly Testolagh. She was close to Kuha, Rounen and Cissidy, but they weren’t _peers_.

Something brushed up her spine, sending a reflexive shiver through her. The soft, tickling sensation moved around her jaw and under her chin to gently raise her head - a silver feather-tendril. Keris brushed her fingers over it, letting it wind around her hand. It was surprisingly delicate this far down - a flat feathered ribbon about three fingers wide, tapering down from the thicker thigh-width tendril that disappeared into the ruff around Pekhijira’s neck. The feathers were soft and small - about the size of a real bird’s plumage instead of the sword-length pinions that covered the snake’s flanks.

“I bet all that time at Orange Blossom’s place where she flaunts how much she has didn’t help, huh?” she added, meeting those blazing green eyes. “Especially with Kazem making a tacky nuisance of himself and being so tasteless.”

The po-Gale bared its teeth for a moment and brought its hair around it in an embrace, crooning quietly. Insecurely.

“Okay then,” Keris said with no little relief. “Then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll spend more time on myself; indulge you more. I promise.” She grinned. That was all? Honestly, that wasn’t even a price. She had been expecting far worse. Dipping a shallow bow, she turned to go.

A feather-tendril she barely heard swept her off her feet, and the one still wrapped around her wrist hauled her up again with bruising force.

“Hey! What the h-”

Pekhijira’s furious shriek cut her off. Keris quailed at the volume, wrapping her hair around her ears as the Gale stalked up to her and bared its fangs, hissing.

“Okay, okay, stop it! Fine, there’s something else, I get it!” She thrashed in the tight grip and twisted her wrist free, losing a layer or two of skin in the process. The noise let up, and she was once again beset by four eyes and one primitive mind.

“Okay, so... there’s something else you’re upset about,” Keris repeated. “Something else that’s been bothering you - me - that I haven’t been aware of. Something... else.”

She considered it. Nothing came to mind. The Gale stalked slowly around her, and Pekhijira’s head drifted to the side as it wound tighter around the false Baisha. A faint breeze stirred the fog, which was getting thicker the longer she stayed here. Pouring off her po, Keris thought absently. Maybe that had something to do with whatever she was meant to be upset about?

... no, that didn’t feel right either.

“Any chance of a hint?” she tried. “Some help? Anything? Because I feel fine. Nothing’s bothering me. I’m a bit stressed from so much work lately, but nothing else.”

An insistent hiss was her only answer, and she felt her patience start to fray. “Look, if it’s taken you however many months to work this out, how do you expect me to fix it when you can’t even tell me what the godsdamned problem is? Help yourself out! Make yourself useful or let me _go_...”

Something crashed into her. Not something physical. Something inside; a rush of

_longing hunger sick-hurt solitude sad-wanting-fury_

feeling that made her insides swoop and churn and her blood surge and shivers ripple up her spine and her muscles tense and her gut clench and her heart pound. If Keris heard what she felt from her own body in someone else, she’d call it an emotional tsunami.

“Whngh,” she croaked. “Is. Is that. You?”

She felt

_guilt shame anger need-want frustration tense-watchful wary_

the unseen outside-thing force its way into her feelings again; making her head reel and her fists clench and her lips draw back in a snarl. “Ssstop that. _Mine_.”

The silver-her pressed up against her, growling low in its throat. Keris snarled back, stepping into it; forcing it backwards. She

_dread-worry nervous anxious growing-terror panic fear TERROR_

“Agh!”

Staggering back, Keris clutched at her head and took a deep breath, forcing the Other away. She was starting to feel the buried grievances beneath the rush of what passed for surface thoughts now; things that both _were_ and _weren’t_ her own. They were coming from outside of her - she could feel the foreign edge as they radiated into her through the po’s feathers. But at the same time, they weren’t foreign at all. They were hers, and she could feel the reflections of them from deep within herself; dragged up by the intrusion into her head and the simple proximity to her lower soul.

She focused on the Gale. It was easier to speak as if she were talking about something _it_ was feeling, not the doubts and uncertainties that she was becoming aware of within herself.

“You’re... we’re...” she corrected, blinking back tears. “... I mean... Haneyl is gone and Sasi’s not here and I liked spending time with Ali and Zany and Hany but they’re gone now as well... I really miss Sasi but if I slept with people just for fun Calesco would get mad at me, and I don’t have any other friends or peers... we’re _lonely_.” She sniffed. “Not just jealous. Lonely, too. And worried about Haneyl being around humans, and whether Ali and the girls will be safe on their trip...”

Sniffing, Keris wiped her eyes on a sleeve.

“And I think I’m worried about the p-pregnancy,” she said, her voice cracking a little on the last word. “More than I thought I was. We - I - I think I’ve been... been flensing that away every time it’s started to bother me, without even realising, but I guess it didn’t get rid of it completely. A-and it’s not just worrying about what will happen once they’re born, we’re _fed up_ of being pregnant! All fat and bloated and achey and hungry all the time! I _hate_ being like this! I hate how Kazem made me feel _stupid!_ I hate how Orabilis is probably using our spell! How I dunno if I should’ve given it to him at all!”

Keris crouched down, curling around her belly and hugging herself with her hair. “I thought I left all this messed-up soft crap behind when I Exalted,” she moaned. “Instead I guess I just started ignoring it. Some big empowerment. I’m...”

She paused. Gulped. Squeezed her eyes shut and took a long, slow breath.

“... I’m still scared, under everything else. Aren’t I?” she asked. “All the worry and insecurity and jealousy and... it’s all just fear. Fear they’ll get hurt when I can’t protect them, or that I’m... not good enough to deal with the next thing that gets thrown at me, or that I’ll lose the stuff that’s mine by making a mistake.”

She laughed; a high-pitched noise that bordered on a sob. “Y-you know, Rat al-always said I was too scared to... to take risks. And he was right. I’ve been holding the Baisha back so the Realm wouldn’t hear stories about it, putting on all these... these false names and faces to make sure people can’t follow the real me if I ever have to run. Another squat with another bolthole. Nothing’s changed...” She trailed off into another sobbing moan.

Pekhijira moaned, too - a low resonant whine like a finger on a colossal wine glass. The scarlet-red forked tongue flickered out, winding around the Gale and pulling it in with a half-swallow, half-inhalation. Then the huge form was on her, encircling her - protecting her? Silver feather-tendrils wound around Keris’s limbs, cradling her in a coiled hollow bounded by razor-feathered flanks. It kept her there as her sobs trailed off into sniffs, and her sniffs died down into a shivering silence.

“You’re just as scared as me, aren’t you?” she whispered to it; hidden in the safety of its wings. “You’re so big and strong that you can act like a god in here... but for things that can threaten you, you’re just like me. That’s why you hide in the fog. We’re both cowards.”

The snake looked down on her from above. It hissed agreement; feathers chiming as they rippled and stood up on end. Like a cat fluffing up its fur to look bigger, Keris thought with a hysterical edge of humour.

“It’s not our _fault_ , though,” she said, filling the silence. “Everyone... everyone gets scared of things. It keeps you alive - it _kept_ me alive, on the streets. Stopped me getting up in the gangs’ faces, stopped me getting soft. That’s what Rat never got, he was always too reckless, that’s what got him...” She cut off, gulping, her eyes stinging again. “That’s why _I’ve_ been getting soft now. Why I fucked up in Agenete... or with Illana. I’m still scared, but I’m so good at killing now that I’m _less_ scared, and it’s making me stupid. It’s not... it’s not a bad thing, to be scared.”

She hugs her knees.

“... I wish I wasn’t, though,” she admits. “I wish I could be brave. If we were brave we might not...”

There were too many impossible hopes behind that sentence, and Keris trailed off rather than burn her hands by touching them. Pekhijira hissed again, firmly this time - demanding, impatient, but positive.

It wasn’t hard to translate its intent. Keris scowled.

“No,” she argued. “Fuck no, I’ll admit I _am_ a... a coward, and I know it’s kept me alive, but I’m not going to be fucking _proud_ of it. You’re the one who embraces hiding in the fog all the time. I’m more than that.”

A snarl, this time. A billow of fog came with it, swirling out from those vast jaws to engulf Keris, and when the thick white blanket dissipated there was another po-Gale standing in front of Keris. This one was wearing a crude mimicry of Keris’ own preferred mode of dress, rough red fabric forming a copy of that dress she’d stolen back in Nexus, all those years ago.

It was scowling, too; feral eyes glaring right at Keris and sharp teeth bared. Keris watched it warily as it strode forward and began to back up.

“Look, I don’t know what you want _now_ , but-”

Two sets of hands grabbed her from behind, and her hair was snared in tight coils that bit back at her when she snapped at them. She struggled, but her captors were as strong as she was.

Oh. It had made _three_ Gales. Two of them behind her. And the things were infuriatingly quiet in the fog.

Shit.

“Let _go_ of me!” she ordered, struggling. “I said- dammit, get off, let me...” Teeth bared, she reached out for Vali’s stubborn refusal to be bound. If she shook off the two holding her and threw them at the one in front, they’d be in the way of whatever attack it was about to make and she could use the distraction to-

It kissed her. Keris was so taken off-guard by the sudden press of lips against her own that she stopped struggling for a moment, breathing in sharply. Which seemed to be exactly the reaction it was looking for, because the Gale came apart even as she inhaled; rendered down into a bloody red mist along with the other two and forcing its way down, down, deep into Keris’s lungs as they became part of her.

First their flesh.

And then, too quickly for her to stop the reintegration, their minds.

 

* * *

 

In a scarily silent whirl of feathers, Pekhijira was gone, leaving Keris all alone. The mists took her po, and it was gone. Standing morosely, she jogged back down the ramming spike of the Baisha-berg and took a shortcut down the sheer wall rather than the long way down the inclined deck. She didn’t know which way Pekhijira had gone - or, come to think of it, which way the City was - so she picked a direction and started walking, and thinking.

... thinking about... well, how she felt crappy, mostly. Which was bad twice over; once because she felt insecure and lonely and raw and stressed and more than a little scared at what she might have just done to herself, and once because... well, the po was gone now. And she was still feeling bad.

Which meant that yeah, these feelings were really hers.

Fuck.

She hadn’t really expected all the emotional turmoil to magically vanish as soon as the snake did, but it was still a bruise to her ego to know that she’d been hiding all this uncertainty from herself rather than face up to it. Not that she was going to _embrace_ it like her po obviously wanted her to, though. She might be a coward, and it might be good for her survival, but it wasn’t something to cheer about.

It didn’t take long for her to leave the scraped-bare plain that the po had carved out, and get back into the strange ruined city wreathed in fog. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this half-place, built out of warped memories and sensory impressions of cities. It was broken down and rotting, smashed by a giant silver-feathered monster that demolished buildings if they happened to be in its way. But some bits had been rebuilt. She could see tool marks where people had fixed things - places the roads had been... been... been fixed up. She could even hear some of them. Off in the middle distance was the sound of a small village.

Keris made her... her... Keris went nearer; all quiet and not-seen in the mist. There were... there were demons. She knew them from looking, but she couldn’t remember the names. That wasn’t the main thing though, the main thing was that they were happy! Well, some of them were yelling at each other or... or being... or _arguing_ , yes, that was it. But no more than normal - less than in... than in the big city she came from. Nobody was _fighting_ , for sure, and they were... they were swapping things like food and shiny things, and talking about fog-clearing, and bringing up a new baby ‘fanback’, and how they didn’t like the sicklefang pack turnwise, and someone called Duu Laub who had made everyone laugh a lot when... when something had happened that... that...

... they were saying what had happened. She knew they were. But she couldn’t... she didn’t know what they meant when they said some of it. She was losing words. Her stomach churned and boiled with fear. She was losing her mind! She couldn’t... she could feel mind-shapes she couldn’t put into... talking things, anymore. It was like the... the _thing_ , the type of word-sounds she used at other people, it was slipping away from... from... from...

 

* * *

 

She blinked. She straightened up, cocking her head curiously, and looked around. She’d been upset about losing something, but nothing in her wordless mind could conceptualise that which she had lost. She could hear no threat; feel no threat; see no threat; taste no threat… so there was nothing wrong. Her ears cocked to the sound of beings nearby, and she sauntered silently closer, darting up onto a ramshackle roof to peer down at them. Two demons below were speaking; a richly-bedecked bardeer and a gorgeous sellou. Her eyes widened for a moment as she focused on the ornaments adorning the former’s feathers, then narrowed again as she wrinkled her nose disdainfully.

Below, the discussion continued - the bardeer pleaded innocence to a recent spat of thefts, and escaped unscathed when a reptilian many-mouthed inyenk arrived to ask the village leader about food shortages. Her face shifted subtly as she turned to it; becoming hideous, and conversation turned to trade and the expansion of a new mushroom field.

But it all passed by the figure crouching above them; following the mouth-noises of the creatures she was focused on without comprehension or understanding. She watched their movements; listened to the rise and fall of their tone and the pace of their heartbeats and breathing - but as the terrified bardeer left and the emotions settled with the newcomer’s arrival, she began to lose interest. Swiftly growing bored, she dropped back down to the ground and stalked away with a hiss.

Something! A noise! Down at her waist level, a hip-high shape screamed at her, knife in hand. She screamed back menacingly, grabbing it with a hair-tendril and dangling it upside-down in front of her. It was something familiar and yet not; something that brought to mind thoughts of the scent of paper and ink, the taste of well-cooked and spiced meat, a boyish cheerful voice and the sight of turquoise flame. She had the feeling that there was a mouth-noise for that thought, but she couldn’t pin it down. And this creature wasn’t quite the same. It might have been shaped the same, but in place of petals and fire it had solid fog-flesh layered over glinting metal bones - and it thrashed for a moment before giving up. A plaintive moan was its next effort; rewarded with a dismissive hiss from its captor.

She made no further move to attack it, though. The diffuse light that filtered through the fog glinted off a silver hairpin as she tugged it out and tapped it against the fog child’s teeth and claws. The ringing sound seemed to entrance her, and she listened to it with a satisfied smile, broken only by a warning snap and hiss when the fog child tried to bite at her pin.

It took six taps - and two attempts at biting the pin - before she seemed to come to some decision. Dropping the fog child, she hissed imperiously, swiping at the air. The creature moaned back, whale-like, and made a grab for the pin that got rebuffed by a foot to the face. She hissed again, then screeched; swiping at the air.

But if she was trying to communicate something, it was lost on her audience. Baring its teeth at her, the little fog beast circled for a moment, then raised its hands slowly. Silver claws glinted as it signed to her - slowly at first, then with increasing swiftness and surety.

Not one solitary flicker of understanding lit her eyes. She hissed one final demand and advanced, making it stumble backwards... and then turned with a dismissive sniff to stride away.

A few minutes of exploration, nostrils flared and tongue tasting the air, revealed a scraped-smooth road leading away from one side of the village. The marks of razor-feathers on stone were easy to make out, and her hair rose like scorpion tails, quivering in interest. She skulked up to the side of the road, watching the sparse traffic moving up and down it - citizens riding beasts or pulling carts. Some of them were talking, chattering to each other, though they might as well have been gibbering meaningless animal cries for all the impact they made on their unseen watcher. She flitted unseen down the length of the road - a journey of a kilometre or so before encountering the next settlement it led through; a ramshackle fortified structure pieced together from transposed parts of other buildings. Quite a few bits of it bore similarities to the refurbished First Age buildings in Bastion and other wealthy parts of Nexus, and these her gaze lingered on as her lips pulled back from her teeth in a silent snarl.

A glint caught her attention. Not from her hairpieces this time; from the road. She moved to investigate it, and found the source - a simple talisman of stone and glass, dangling on a cord from a scavenged pole. The carving on its face was crude, but it clearly showed a winged, coiled serpent with two wicked fangs. It seemed to fascinate her, and she circled it several times before dashing off down the line of the road.

A few hundred metres further, there was another. This one was made of metal, and had polished chimes attached to it. A small pile of food had been left at the bottom of its pole, and was sublimating into mist even as she found it. When she picked up the leg of some sort of poultry, the meat slid off the bone as wisps of fog, and the bone itself became dust between her fingers.

She was halfway through leaning down to examine the rest when something tried to pounce on her back from above. Time slowed, and she leant around the leap, flowing like liquid metal to scoop her would-be assailant up in a wave of hair. With a noise in the back of her throat, she dangled it upside-down beside the talisman for her perusal.

Silver teeth glinted again as the fog creature from earlier hissed at her. Rolling her eyes, she dropped it, shooing it away with a lazy kick that failed to connect. She turned back to the pile of food, poking experimentally at the mushrooms one by one...

... her sixth sense warned her of the fog creature even before it screamed, and this time her patience had worn thin. She reacted with a shriek, grabbing the little creature with her hair. Hurling it viciously clean across the road, she bared her teeth at it in a warning to stay away this time. Her hand moved back into her hair, combing it out and untangling the snarls caused by the brief scuffle.

Then her head snapped up, eyes wide, and she let out a furious scream as she dived into pursuit.

It was a surprisingly long chase. She was swift and deadly, but the fog-child blended into the mist so perfectly that it was all but indistinguishable. Scampering on air, leaving denser footprints of fog behind that went unseen in the thickening mist, it was nearly silent. It was difficult to make out what was clutched in its foglike fist, but a brief detour through an open pocket in the bank revealed it to be a spiralling silver hairpiece stolen from its rightful place. For almost a full minute, the pair delved deeper in the mists; driven by greed, possessive fury and an odd yelp of fear whenever she made a grasping lunge.

Then, without warning, a wall of feathers emerged from the fog so suddenly that they nearly ran into it. She skidded to a halt with a gasp as the little creature disappeared up and over the massive form. Atop the giant, slumbering flank of the demon lord, it found a white-haired female - just like her, they’d stolen her face! - waiting for it, and exchanged the hairpiece for two glinting silver feathers.

Nor was it the only such creature to stand on the back of the Serpent King. There were others like it; scampering across the enormous form, polishing its feathers and occasionally fighting with one another when two pinions shifted to let a piece of down slip free. Her ears twitched as she took in the scene No, they weren’t all quite the same. Some of them had the general shape that made her think of fire and well-cooked food and the smell of ink, but there were others. Darting up there, a pair of paint-and-clay-and-many-colours fog-shapes polished feathers, while down below a creature of fog-ribbons, blood and sweetness warred with childish girlishness, fog-caped and an almost-familial relationship.

She moaned, hissing between her teeth. The feelings; they hurt. There were ways to explain them, ways to record them, ways to not-experience them - but they’d escaped her. There were people out there she cared about, but all she had was the painful sensory imprints of them without any detachment.

Around the huge coiled po, spiralling patterns stretched out - silver, gold, gems; all arranged in an overarching pattern. Emeralds that burned from within spilled out on the stone, curving out in long lines from a branch of delicately placed silver dinars. A crumbling wall hosted glints of gold in every nook and cranny, which together made up the shape of a stylised wheel. Or perhaps a flower - for a line of braided silken rope tied off at the centre formed a stem, leading down to the hilt of a gleaming sword that stood proudly in the ground below.

Atop the serpent’s back, the white-haired face-stealer examined the silver hairpiece critically for a moment, then flicked it through the air. It tinkled across the ground, lay still for a moment, and then began to move in a series of clinking rolls toward an abstract slew of silver and rubies. From above, it might have been a canvas speckled in metallic paints, and the hairpiece slotted into it perfectly to accentuate the furthest corner.

It was beauty used to create beauty; an art-hoard of piled-up treasure, and her eyes flashed green as she took it in the expanse. Nor was it only the wealth that caught her notice, for her head turned unerringly towards the creatures hidden by fog; the demons who tended to the spread-out masterpiece and polished the living feathers of its architect. Though the fog was thick here; none were suffocating, and one by one she picked out pendants around each demon’s neck; a silver feather hanging from every one.

Pekhijira shifted in its sleep, emitting a low, sonorous moan that echoed through the mists and made the fog itself reverberate and swirl. One cat-like eye cracked open, and the bright gleam focused right on her.

She fled.

The broken, fog-wreathed city blurred around her as she ran; feet pounding, hair lashing, eyes wide as she strained to see through the mist and gloom. There were things running with her; shapeless silent shadows behind every curl of cloud that paced her with ease however fast she went. Sometimes she lunged at them and they weren’t there; formless air and vapour offering no resistance to her wild and desperate blows. Sometimes she flinched from them and they were; punishing impacts from fists and thrown stones striking her blind spots with pinpoint aim.

And then there was the big one. The one she was really running from.

Vast jaws clashed shut on the ends of her hair and she screamed, throwing herself into an iced-over river and swimming. A wing came out of nowhere to shear through ice, water and stone bare inches in front of her nose, cutting off her escape. She ran outward and it struck from the Cloud Wall, a casual lash of an unseen tail throwing her a dozen yards into a wall. She scrambled inward and it herded her back, razor-feathered flanks rushing past her and taking off three layers of skin in a movement she never heard.

It was everywhere. It was nowhere. She was never safe, never out of harm’s way, and yet the danger was never seen, never heard, never there to touch or fight back against. She ran and she ran and she ran where the shapeless her-sized shadows herded her, sobbing in terror and always expecting another blow, another scream, another lunge. Strike by strike she learned - she _re_ learned, things she had once known and still understood, at a level so deep it wasn’t thought.

Nothing was safe. Never relax. Another threat is always there, another blow is always coming. If she couldn’t see it, it would take her off-guard. If it took its time coming, it would be worse for the wait. There was no escape. There was no fighting back. She could hide, but never for long. There was always something stronger, and she was its prey - just as things weaker were prey to her.

She ran, until her eyes burned and her tears ran dry. She ran, until every muscle hurt from bruises and stinging cuts. She ran, until terror was so much a part of her that it was normal.

And then there was something in the mists ahead of her that wasn’t a shadow, and wasn’t a predator, and wasn’t herding or attacking her.

It was herself. A white-haired fog-her, but it didn’t attack and it didn’t lunge and when she shied away it didn’t follow her or vanish. It just stood there. Arms held slightly out. Hair pulled back. Teeth covered.

Smiling.

She glanced around, trembling. This slit-eyed-and-still fog-her wasn’t attacking and it didn’t feel like a threat but there was always a threat and there must be something coming but it wasn’t coming from the her-but-not-her which meant it must be coming from somewhere else but she couldn’t see or hear it and it could come from anywhere.

Anywhere but the fog-her. The fog-her wouldn’t hurt her, and it wasn’t moving, so it couldn’t be the danger, so the danger wouldn’t come from there. She circled closer to it, turning her back to it instinctively and facing out, pacing around and vaguely hearing it turn to face her as she moved.

The next attack. The next predator, it was... where was... it must be... she couldn’t see, she couldn’t find it. The shadows weren’t there anymore, the unseen herding things in the mist that forced her to go where they wanted her to go, and without them she didn’t know which way was safe, which way was allowed, which way would get her hurt least. Her hair prickled, stirring uncertainly, and her defensive spiral tightened.

It had never been this long without an attack unless she was hiding. It would be bad when it came. It would be really, really bad, it would... it would...

... it would...

Her hair brushed the edge of something warm behind her with the faintest of touches, and she span with a yelp. The fog-her-not- _her_ -her smiled back softly, arms still slightly spread. She’d circled close enough to step forward and touch it, and though she bristled, it didn’t move. Didn’t shift its hair from the slow waves rippling behind it. Didn’t even look directly at her. Its eyes were focused past her, into the fog. Its ears twitched with every little sound. It was...

... it was watching the fog too. For the predators.

She wavered for only a moment before throwing herself forward and wrapping around it with a whimper. If it was watching then she didn’t have to, if it was wary then she could relax, if it was on guard then she was... then... then she was safe.

She was safe.

She was _safe_.

The fog-her could watch for her, and she could be safe, and not have to be scared.

And with that realisation, she understood the _why_ of this hunt and the chase and the fear, and it brought tears to her eyes with another choked sob.

She reached up blindly as the fog-her’s arms came down to hold her, and pulled its head down into a kiss.

 

* * *

 

Far out at the edge of the Ruin, the dusty dry land broke up into floating islands that grew smaller and higher until they merged into the Cloud Wall. Beneath them was nothing but turbulent fog, and the gusts that broke off the edge of the vast anticyclone buffeted the hovering chunks of rock with brutal force; sometimes overturning them completely or sending them into mad and dangerous spins.

Nevertheless, a few mad or reckless demons made a home here - and others liked to visit. A gaggle of szelkeruby from the latter group crowded now around a large island of half an acre that was anchored near the border of the Spires; chained to the Ruin some hundred feet below to keep it from drifting. Craggy poles of basalt harvested from the ever-abundant stalagmite-mines had been thrust into the ground across the entire island - even the sides and bottom - and the wind cherubs laughed and whooped as they danced atop them.

The sound of their play reached the Ruin below, audible to the woman floating down a blood-river as she stirred. She shifted and stretched in the confused halfway-state between waking and dreams, flexing her coils and cracking her neck as the blood flowed through her hair and across her feathers...

Language had faded slowly. It returned in a rush, and Keris jackknifed over with a scream; her legs thrashing to get her to the nearest bank. She scrambled up onto the rust-red dust of the Ruin plains and drew her knees up into a foetal ball to hug herself as she took stock. Legs, check. Feet, check. Arms, check. Hair, check. Snake coils, no. Feathers, no. Fangs... well, her teeth felt sharper, but not by that much. She was naked, there were - she twisted to check as something caught the periphery of her vision - yes, white strands in her hair, and none of the blood on her was hers. It all seemed to be from the river, as far as she could tell.

“I’m not even twenty five and I’m already going white,” she groaned. “Dragons, is this what it feels like to be Sasi?”

Still, she was whole and not missing any body parts. Or possessed of any that shouldn’t be there. The initial panic faded enough for more conscious thought.

 _Makers_ , was her next thought. What the... what in the _clamouring hells_ had that been? Something like Yozi Sickness, if she was any judge - the way her language had slipped away and left her...

... not an animal. Not quite. She’d been thinking - she could remember everything she’d done, and there had definitely been some critical analysis of the road-talismans or that bardeer’s jewellery in there. But it had been thought without words, without vocabulary or much in the way of abstract concepts.

A very smart beast, perhaps.

One of the concepts she hadn’t understood in that state was _time_. How long had she run, terrified and panicking, through the mists with her po-soul pursuing her? Hours? Days? She had no way of knowing. But she looked to be somewhere in the Ruin now when she’d started on the edge of the Isles, and while she could circle the Domain in an hour and a half she’d doubled back or been forced to change direction more times than she could remember.

Shivering, she pulled herself upright and set off for the City. It hadn’t been a Yozi, though. She’d caught Yozi sickness from… her own lower soul. Her monstrously mutated lower soul. that said things she didn’t even want to think about, and so didn’t as she ran. A Chord on anyaglo-back met her before she even passed the outskirt-settlements.

“Child,” Dulmea asked; her mount swinging round to keep pace with Keris’s progress over the rooftops. “What have you done? Where have you been? The map of the Empire...”

“Later,” Keris said shortly. “I’ll explain later. First I need to make an apology.”

“To whom?”

“Pekhijira. Let me think for a minute.” She looked down ruefully. “First I need new clothes. Or any clothes at all.”

It took only a few moments for Keris to come to the Outer Wall. There was another cutting the Outer City - the Directional suburbs that had grown up around her original Devil-Domain and now probably collectively out-massed their parent - from the Inner City within, where Dulmea’s music was omnipresent and her will was absolute. _That_ wall was rough marble; weathered and wind-worn from the time when it was the border of the stormwall and dotted through with red flecks. Just outside it lay a band of bright arterial scarlet filled with Old Realm glyphs the shade of dried blood that declared Dulmea’s authority over and over.

 _This_ wall was not a metaphysical border. What it was, though, was big and looming and made of a lot of stone. It was as tall as a five-storey building and at least as thick as four grown men lying head-to-foot. The gates through it felt more like tunnels, and were rigorously guarded by Dulmea’s angyals and needle bells, with a number of Calesco’s tar-ball demons and Haneyl’s sziromkeruby helping.

Keris ignored them and sprinted straight up and over the thing. The Outer City was smaller and more sparsely populated - it had lost buildings and chunks of land when the Old City had been scattered across the Empire. The suburbs of the Ruin were always a little crumbling and broken, but Keris could distinguish the natural erosion of the Ruin’s geomancy from the more recent scars left by her fight with Dulmea even at high speed.

There were quite a lot of the latter, and they stood out starkly against the background of citizens going about their lives.

The rest of the trip to the Tower Melodious was short. Dulmea’s Chord peeled off, but Keris didn’t for a moment think her mother had let the matter go. If she knew what Keris was about to do, she’d be furious.

True to expectation, she was standing in front of the wide silver bowl that held the map of Krisity when Keris reached the highest level. Even from the brass doors, Keris could see that the tiny fog-wall was sparking; silver streaks of power crackling through it. Points of light were drifting off it and up into a swirling mass above the bowl, then drifting down again like rain.

“Child,” Dulmea said gravely as Keris got dressed in the clothes Dulmea had left out for her. “What do you plan to do? Explain yourself. Explain _this_. What chaos is the beast attempting now?”

“Let me at the bowl,” Keris replied. “It’s gathering power for something. I can settle it. Let me at the bowl and I’ll show you.”

“ _No_ ,” snapped Dulmea. “You will explain what is happening first, this time. You are too reckless with changes to your soul; too quick to...”

But Keris wasn’t listening. She darted past - _over_ \- her mother with a two-step run-up and a leaping flip; landing safely on the other side of the bowl, and grabbed the side of the bowl with both hands. Her skin split instantly; blood running out to ring the perimeter of the bowl just as it had more than a year ago when she’d declared Dulmea her right hand. Her hair curved up to cradle the bowl - two tendrils wrapping around the perimeter, another two arching up to flank the mass of silver sparks and two more plunging into the middle of the cloud.

It felt not unlike sticking her hands into a lightning storm. Or what she assumed sticking her hands into a lightning storm would feel like. But more than that, there was a deep and abiding sense of _connection_. To Pekhijira. To the world within her soul. To every being within it.

She was vaguely aware that her anima was flaring, and that her caste mark had probably expanded across her face again. But that wasn’t important.

This was.

A clear window opened in the cloud - not a hole through to the bowl below, but a vision into the Rim itself. Keris met the snake’s gaze, and knew that it could see her in turn. Its eyes blazed green, and she thought she could see a tiny hint of uncertainty in its coiled body language.

“I understand now,” she said. “What you wanted to show me. What you wanted me to accept. I get it, and I want to thank you.” A faint smile. “You’re the part of me that’s always scared and looking out for danger. And that means _this_ bit of me doesn’t have to be terrified all the time, because you’re watching our back. You keep us safe. You guard us.”

It crooned at her, the sound reverberating through the window and into the Tower. Keris knew Dulmea heard it, from her gasp, but her mother had backed off. Probably wary of being too close while her daughter conducted whatever internal sorcery she was working.

“I was wrong before,” Keris added. “And this is me trying to make it right. I’ll respect you more from now on. I promise.”

Shaking out her shoulders, she took a deep breath. This would be... well, she wasn’t sure _what_ this would do. But it was something that needed doing.

“ ** _I am Keris,_** ” she said; the Old Realm rolling out sonorously and carrying in a way that natural sound didn’t and couldn’t. She could tell it went past the walls of the Tower. Perhaps even past the walls of the City. It was a decree as absolute and binding as the one she’d made in Dulmea’s name a year and a half ago. “ ** _This is my Domain, and all that resides within it descends from me. Those that live within it are my souls or my citizens. I carved it with the gifts of my patrons, but it is not theirs to claim. Within this world, the Law comes from me._** ”

Far away in the Edgelands and yet right in front of her, the burning green glow of her po’s eyes faded, and in its place was left her own shade of grey - filling its eyes except for the slitted pupil. She swallowed and continued, pulling the words from an even blend of instinct and reason. “ ** _Thereby I decree this so; as Dulmea is my right hand here, so Pekhijira is my left. As my Fourth Soul is queen, so too is my Second. It guards my mind and the borders of my soul, and once a month when the moon of Creation is absent, it will be honoured in festival, feasting and song._** ”

A silver flash lit off; rippling out through the fog above the bowl and making the entire Empire tremble for a moment. Keris saw, just for a second, her own caste mark mirrored on her po’s forehead. No; Pekhijira’s. She’d promised to show it more respect; calling it by name was part of that. She called her other souls by name

“I give you this,” she said quietly, watching the fog cloud above her Domain-in-miniature begin to disperse. “I honour you, and what you are to me. And you respect me in return. Are we agreed?”

Vast grey eyes - so like her own - blinked once. A low rumble rolled up from deep within Pekhijira’s throat. A growl? No. A purr.

Then there was a rush of air and fog and movement, and her second soul was gone.

Keris slumped down, hair pooling over the map of the world, gasping for breath. She was dreaming, but as it stood she just wanted so sleep. Again. And she was feeling lightheaded and woozy and…

Dulmea caught her before she could collapse on the world to unknown effects, and not entirely gently guided her to one of her waiting seats. The angyalka music here was dark and brooding and none-too-happy, so Keris felt she had to say something now before she got scolded again.

“I was...” she wheezed between pants, “ignoring it. Out on the edges. Like I did to you... when we had our fight. But it’s... an older part of me... than even you.” She sagged down into the seat gratefully. “All the power the All-Makers gave me... they gave it as well. I had to acknowledge that somehow. It deserved it - and it wanted it. I wanted it. Forgetting and ignoring Pekhijira was forgetting who I am; where I started.”

“It’s a monster,” Dulmea said bluntly.

“Not… not exactly. Also, I think it’s a she. Because I’m a she. But it’s also a giant snake, so maybe that doesn’t matter much.” Keris squeezed her eyes shut, fighting off the encroaching headache. “Either way, I think it’ll be happier now. The festivals will sate it - and they’ll be out near the borders where they won’t bother you. It won’t be as pissy and angry all the time, and... it won’t attack the Empire anymore.”

It might have helped to explain to Dulmea all that she’d realised in the mists during the play of prey and predator it had acted out with her; how Keris was a coward at heart and the part of her that was always looking out for the next threat had ended up in Pekhijira. But that would take words. Words and effort she didn’t feel up to right now.

It could wait, probably.

Something faint and tapping drew her attention. Keris frowned. It was coming from her hair. Running her hands through it, she found that she’d picked up more than a few mementos in her trip through the Edgelands. A glass-bladed knife; many strange silver coins of irregular shapes and sizes; a polished bit of horn that she didn’t even remember seeing let alone sticking in her hair. But the noise itself wasn’t coming from any of them and-

“An egg?” Dulmea asked, peering at what Keris had found.

Oh. Keris blinked. Yes, that was Vali’s egg he’d wanted her to look after. Cradling it in both hands, she stroked it gently as she listened to the bird inside. It was trying to get out.

Resting it on the floor, her hands blurred as the Grief-Choking Lance came lashing out, cutting the tip clean off the egg which shattered with a peal of thunder.

“Owie,” Keris said, massaging her ears. Bending down, squatting over the egg, she gently helped the newborn out of the remnants of its birthing.

It was a strange little thing. Perhaps it had once been one of Vali’s creatures, but its journey with Keris had left it changed. A silver-boned, fog-fleshed, lightning-feathered chick looked up at Keris, and peeped expectantly.

“What is that?” Dulmea asked wearily.

Keris smiled. “A present from Pekhijira to you, mama,” she said with a cheeky grin, picking it up and depositing it in Dulmea’s hair.

“I don’t know how to look after something like that!”

“Well, maybe it’s a good time to learn. Think of it as a peace offering.”

The chick peeped again, looking up at Dulmea who largely looked confused.

“Keris, you get back here right…”

“Can’t hear you, mama, I’m waking up!”

 

* * *

 

“Mmff.”

“Kerishyra!” Kuha scrambled over to her boss. “You were so far asleep! Your heart was barely beating! What was it? Another godsdream?” She watched anxiously as Keris stirred, one hand coming up to scrub at her face as her tongue flicked out over her teeth.

Grey eyes opened slowly. Their pupils were vertical slits, and silver feathers chimed against each other as a lock of hair fell over a slanted shoulder. Blinking a couple of times to take in her surroundings, Keris gave Kuha a secretive little smile and hummed low in her throat.

“Something like that,” she said.

And behind her eyes, a coiled and watchful presence crooned agreement.


End file.
